What if they went after the Supreme Court while it was considering election issues…

https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/06/brazil_court_ransomware/

Ransomware attack shutters Brazilian courts. But did attackers breach the virtual machine divide?

Brazil’s Superior Tribunal de Justiça has temporarily shut down after a suspected ransomware attack.

The Tribunal (STJ) is second-highest of Brazil’s courts and is the highest court that decides on federal matters other than constitutional law. At the time of writing, the court’s website consists of nothing but a series of updates on the attack. Those notifications state that a virus attack was detected on November 3, when court networks were shut down as a precaution.

The most recent update says the attacked encrypted data related to legal proceedings, email, and administrative contracts. The statement says the data has been backed up and that work to restore systems is under way, with court business to resume on Monday November 9. Which will be more than welcome because hundreds of cases have been suspended due to the incident.

You probably won’t get all of your employees to read this paper, but you need to.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3415231

How Experts Detect Phishing Scam Emails

Phishing scam emails are emails that pretend to be something they are not in order to get the recipient of the email to undertake some action they normally would not. While technical protections against phishing reduce the number of phishing emails received, they are not perfect and phishing remains one of the largest sources of security risk in technology and communication systems. To better understand the cognitive process that end users can use to identify phishing messages, I interviewed 21 IT experts about instances where they successfully identified emails as phishing in their own inboxes. IT experts naturally follow a three-stage process for identifying phishing emails. In the first stage, the email recipient tries to make sense of the email, and understand how it relates to other things in their life. As they do this, they notice discrepancies: little things that are "off'' about the email. As the recipient notices more discrepancies, they feel a need for an alternative explanation for the email. At some point, some feature of the email --- usually, the presence of a link requesting an action --- triggers them to recognize that phishing is a possible alternative explanation. At this point, they become suspicious (stage two) and investigate the email by looking for technical details that can conclusively identify the email as phishing. Once they find such information, then they move to stage three and deal with the email by deleting it or reporting it. I discuss ways this process can fail, and implications for improving training of end users about phishing.

Perspective. (Will the US follow their lead?)

https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/06/surveillance_camera_commissioner_80000_half_uk_councils/

Snap-crappy: 183 Brit local authorities operate 80,000 CCTV cams between them, says surveillance watchdog

"There are over 6,000 systems and 80,000 cameras in operation across 183 LAs!" So exclaimed the UK's outgoing Surveillance Camera Commissioner as he detailed just how many council CCTV cameras there are across the nation.

In a public plea asking councils to take compliance with surveillance laws seriously, Tony Porter lifted the lid on the scale and depth of CCTV camera deployment across Great Britain.

The figure of 80,000 cameras across 183 councils covers just under half of Britain's 343 local authorities (LAs), meaning district and county councils, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts and London boroughs.

Local authorities have access to "recent innovations such as dash cams and body-worn video" deployed across the length and breadth of boroughs and counties, as Porter explained in a recent blog post asking councils to ensure they comply with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.

“It’s for your own good!”

UK: Woman threatened with police visit after refusing to download NHS corona tracking app

Cindy Harper reports:

A British woman has been threatened with a visit from police for refusing to download the NHS coronavirus tracking app on her smartphone and allowing herself to be tracked. This the latest story in how the coronavirus is leading to an erosion of civil liberties in many countries.

The woman recently tested positive for COVID and is in self-isolation at home.

Read more on Reclaim the Net.

Correlation is not causation, except when it is.

https://www.bespacific.com/counties-with-worst-virus-surges-overwhelmingly-voted-for-trump/

Counties with worst virus surges overwhelmingly voted for Trump

AP – “U.S. voters went to the polls starkly divided on how they see President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, with a surprising twist: In places where the virus is most rampant now, Trump enjoyed enormous support. An Associated Press analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority — 93% of those counties — went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas. Most were rural areas in Montana, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin. Taking note of the contrast, state health officials are pausing for a moment of introspection. Even as they worry about rising numbers of hospitalizations and deaths, they hope to reframe their messages and aim for a reset on public sentiment now that the election is over. “Public health officials need to step back, listen to and understand the people who aren’t taking the same stance” on mask-wearing and other control measures, said Dr. Marcus Plescia of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “I think there’s the potential for things to get less charged and divisive,” he said, adding that there’s a chance a retooled public health message might unify Americans around lowering case counts so hospitals won’t get swamped during the winter months. The AP’s analysis was limited to counties in which at least 95% of precincts had reported results, and grouped counties into six categories based on the rates of COVID-19 cases they’d experienced per 100,000 residents…”

Might be useful for ‘normal people’ too.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/sites-law-students/

The 10 Best Websites for Law Students

I’ll ask my niece to explain some of these.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/20-awesome-music-extensions-for-chrome/

The 20 Best Music Extensions for Google Chrome

… since the selection of music extensions available for Chrome is changing all the time, it can be easy to miss the best ones coming onto the scene. You may not even realize how much you needed a certain one until you try it.